Hel­lenic Bank sees 1H prof­its at
€ 1.1 mln

Hel­lenic Bank an­nounced that it had a “marginally prof­itable” first half of 2016, re­al­is­ing a profit of EUR 1.1 mln, ap­prov­ing EUR 152 mln in new loans and with fur­ther re­struc­tur­ings of EUR 334 mln.

“Over­all, the bank is on the right track, given the chal­leng­ing eco­nomic en­vi­ron­ment both in Cyprus and in­ter­na­tion­ally,” it said in an an­nounce­ment.

Hel­lenic said its man­age­ment is “to­tally fo­cused and fully ded­i­cated to ad­dress­ing the non-per­form­ing ex­po­sures (NPEs),” that de­creased for a third quar­ter in a row. As at June 30, NPEs de­creased by 2% from March 31 and by 4% com­pared to 31 De­cem­ber 2015, with the NPE ra­tio de­clin­ing to 57.7% whilst the cov­er­age ra­tio im­proved to 50.2%.

De­spite mov­ing into a low in­ter­est rates en­vi­ron­ment, Hel­lenic Bank said it’s net in­ter­est mar­gin in­creased to 2.1% at June 30 as a re­sult of con­tin­ued repric­ing of de­posits and in­come gen­er­ated from the new ex­po­sures.

The Group said it main­tains ro­bust cap­i­tal ad­e­quacy ra­tios, above the min­i­mum re­quired by the rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tory au­thor­i­ties. As at June 30, the Com­mon Eq­uity Tier 1 (CET 1) ra­tio stood at 13.92%, com­pared to the min­i­mum CET 1 ra­tio set by the ECB for Hel­lenic Bank of 11.75%. At the end of 2Q2016, the Group’s Cap­i­tal Ad­e­quacy Ra­tio was 17.15% and the Tier 1 ra­tio was 16,9%.

Dur­ing the first half of 2016 the Group main­tained its strong liq­uid­ity po­si­tion. The net loan to de­posits ra­tio stood at 50.5% as at June 30. To­tal de­posits amounted to EUR 6.1 bln, while to­tal gross loans reached EUR 4.3 bln.

The to­tal ex­penses for the 6-month pe­riod de­creased by 6% com­pared to the same pe­riod of 2015. The cost to in­come ra­tio for the first 6 months of 2016 was 55.2%, com­pared to 64.7% for the first six months of 2015.

The bank said man­age­ment’s top pri­or­i­ties for the re­main­ing of 2016 is the han­dling of the still high level of NPEs and the growth of the loan port­fo­lio by in­ten­si­fy­ing re­struc­tur­ing ef­forts with vi­able cus­tomers and those demon­strat­ing im­proved cus­tomer be­hav­iour.

“How­ever, for non-co­op­er­a­tive cus­tomers Hel­lenic Bank will demon­strate zero tol­er­ance and will make full use of avail­able tools through the re­cent amend­ments on the le­gal and ju­di­cial frame­work,” it said.

“It is en­cour­ag­ing to see that the bank is mak­ing progress against its strate­gic pri­or­i­ties, which are to re­duce non per­form­ing ex­po­sures (NPE) on the one hand and growth on the other,” said CEO Bert Pi­jls.

“Our NPE ra­tio dropped for the third con­sec­u­tive quar­ter. As I have re­peat­edly stated, Hel­lenic Bank will con­tinue to ex­plore all avail­able op­tions in an ef­fort to de­ci­sively tackle the NPE prob­lem. Our ex­penses are be­low pre­vi­ous year, loan growth is on track and our mar­ket share has in­creased, and our net in­ter­est mar­gin has im­proved. That be­ing said, the ef­fects of the cri­sis are still be­ing felt and we have had to build some ad­di­tional pro­vi­sions dur­ing the first 6 months of the year, which re­sulted in a profit for the Group of EUR 1 mln dur­ing the first 6 months of 2016.”